Upright Fucking Bass

You’re canny tall and it’s still bigger than you.

At half price it was still more then any of your electric basses.

Playing it hurts.

Carrying it hurts.

There’s never room to lie it down so once it’s set up you can’t move from that spot ’til you put it away again.

It fits in your car but only if you don’t need your handbrake.

Every other upright player has a better set up than you and recommends gear that’s more than you can afford but you get it anyway, only to find out it doesn’t work any better than the shit you were using already.

You’ll spend more than the cost of the bass trying to find a pickup that works.

It’s the one instrument that prompts people to offer you a hand carrying it in, but you soon find out that the only thing worse than wrestling it through a doorway yourself, is having another prick involved.

You start off determined not to use cheeky markers to show you where the frets would be but after two years of playing out of tune you swallow your pride and draw them on, only to find out that they’re useless as the intonation changes with the weather.

Although it’s common knowledge that the strings last forever, you snap two of them within a month of owning the bastard thing and have to remortgage your house for replacements.

You’ve never had a gig where you got it to sound good but you reckon you’ve cracked for the next one…you haven’t.

You could spend all that extra time and effort on something worthwhile, but you won’t.

You’ll just keep on failing on the upright.